Max Read

Does president Obama have a 19-year-old son? Most people would guess, correctly, that no, the most powerful and famous man on the planet does not have an adult son whom you've never seen, and any articles about it are clearly satire. Not Floridians, though. No — Floridians want to know if the Onion article they've been forwarded is real.

Why would residents of the great state of Florida be so ready to believe that the president had a son out of wedlock 20 years ago? Who knows! (Racism.) But either way, the Florida Times-Union is here to service its readers with a "Fact Check":

Times-Union readers want to know: Did President Barack Obama's 19-year-old son actually appear at the Democratic National Convention?

Many local inboxes and Facebook pages received versions of a viral email saying that Obama's rarely seen son Luther, "a shy slightly overweight teen who has lived all of his life with his mother in central Illinois," appeared with the president on the convention stage. The relationship between the two is described in the email as "somewhat distant and occasionally strained."

The email was traced by various fact-finding organizations to The Onion, a website that publishes all manner of satires and spoofs. It's meant to be funny, not factual.

But will people even trust the lamestream media? A quick check of the Times-Union comment section shows that, yes, the paper's has already made an impression on its readers: